Sprint Gets Rid of Mail In Rebates

This entry was posted on March 30, 2011 by Pure Mobile.

Sprint has officially ditched their mail-in rebates model, and is now going to be going with an instant rebate model that provides instant savings to their users. Verizon also made a similar move at the beginning of the year. The move will mostly effect their most expensive cell phone. The idea behind the mail in rebates is that a certain percent of the customers will never take advantage of it and will just choose to pay the extra costs rather than spend the time mailing the rebate in. Also, there were issues with the mail in rebate never arriving, which was a complaint of many who took the time to pursue the rebate.

The information was confirmed by Sprint. The official switch came on March 27th, and will continue well into the foreseeable future. The company has not stated whether or not this switch will be completely permanent, but did make it clear that they were willing to give it a shot for quite some time moving forward.

If the switch is is only a temporary one, the company has not released any information regarding when users can expect it to disappear, so you might want to take advantage of the offer while it was there. The company made the move shortly after the same move was made by Verizon.

It will be interesting to see if other carriers follow in the footsteps of both Verizon and Sprint. Getting rid of the mail in rebate is certainly something that would be in the best interest of their customers, but may not be in the best interests of the company. Look for more companies to make similar changes in the future if it leads to more sales of smart devices. That is the end goal but could result in reduced revenue for the company, which could mean that the offer doesn’t stick around quite as long as many are hoping that it will.